A small play, offering a slice of life in Turnerdom. In this trenche de vie, Shasta and Mommy are sitting on the dead couch. The new puppy has been having fun with the couch, already used as a cat tree by Whiner cat and a launch site by the younger Ginger puppy. The new puppy Lady has been trying to dig into the stuffing, and has been pulling out stuffing along an already broken seam. Towels and sheets have secured the stuffing but this is an ex-couch. To paraphrase Monty Python:
Jocelyn T: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. ‘E’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!
Albert T: No, no, ‘e’s uh,…he’s resting.
Jocelyn T: Look, matey, I know a dead couch when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.
Albert T: No no he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable couch, the Brown Hulk, idn’it, ay? Beautiful leather!
Mommy is comfortable in her gray, cotton Severus Snape t-shirt with her Target jeans. Shasta, the giant, invisible slug, is settled against mommy, her head on mommy’s knee. Shasta’s brown slug body is covered by an indigo blue and forest green cloak, the colors interwoven into a soft plaid with long, blue fringe at the bottom and a tall indigo collar above a tied, blue-green bow. For Shasta, she is conservatively dressed. Her eyestalks are covered with black goggles attached to the collar of the cloak.
Mommy: OK or perhaps OMG or WTF. ADIH? IDC? SSDD.
Shasta: ADIH? IDC? What do all those letters mean?
Mommy: Another day in…Hades. I don’t care. Same s***, different day.* One of those days, darlin’.
I found the heater was out when I woke up, a bright red panel on its metal body saying, “Stand by” and the more ominous “HELP.” The 24-hour appointment line for Perfect Temperature Control was not working. Their perfection is in doubt, especially since they sold us the regularly crippled boiler and then the extra “boiler buddy” to fix the boiler’s quirks. But I suppose a name like “Intermittent Temperature Control” would not work for them, accurate or not. I photographed the water puddle and sent the photo on.
Shasta: Not good.
Mommy: Nope. My cyborg boiler appears to have peed on itself in the basement while pleading for help, and that help certainly won’t come free.
Shasta: (Knowingly) Even white knights charge for their services, don’t they?
Mommy: (Smiles) Even white knights have to pay for their groceries and lodgings, sweetheart.
Shasta: And this water puddle is a big problem?
Mommy: Unfortunately, the water’s supposed to be inside the boiler, not out, Shasta. No one will fix that with a quick wave of a wand over the control panel. I see green rectangles with Andrew Jackson’s face on them flying away en masse.
Shasta: Flying to Something Temperature Control.
Mommy: Yes. I do trust those guys. If you could see all those old pipes down there… That radiator system is nightmarish and the Temperature Control people did not put it in. But long ago, they were the first firm that managed to figure it out. Old houses and old hotels. It’s no coincidence, Shasta, that “The Shining” ended with a boiler explosion.
Shasta: (Doubtfully) Umm, mommy…
Mommy: So you want to hear the latest? Lady’s last intermediate training class was this morning. Oops number #2,304 for April. The Acura battery was once again dead as a coffin nail, deader even than the couch. I transferred Lady dog to the Toyota van. Backing out, I hit the garage door somehow, a painful, grinding metal scream. The door had stopped more than a foot below the top of the garage. Yet the garage door is working. Minimal damage to the rack on top of the van, I suspect, but nothing that stands out. And Lady passed Intermediate puppy class. Still, if one worries about threes, this might have been the place to shut down the day’s adventures — park the car and go pick up my book.
Shasta: But you didn’t stop, mommy. You never do.
Mommy: No, I couldn’t, and I think we lucked out. The third misadventure may be behind us.
Shasta: (Nods vigorously) I saw Daddy Albert.
Mommy: Yes, Daddy Albert had a hair appointment with Anatoly at Oscar’s (Intermittent) Hair Salon. I think Anatoly might have been upset that daddy was late. Hair was flying everywhere. Anatoly left poor daddy a hairy mess. He had more hair in his lap than on his head. Fortunately, cat rollers are everywhere in Turnerdom, thanks to Tiger Cat and Lady Dog. I am a master of hair disposal. And with luck, I am free of the Russian Strip Mall Barber! Great Clips would have done better for less than half the money. Hell, I would have done better.
(Shasta giggles.)
Mommy: (Grinning) Scary thought, huh?
Shasta: Oh, mommy, it sounds like a bad day.
Mommy: Yes, and meanwhile, the dragon journal has disappeared. I have walked most of the house. I pulled out drawers. Looked on top of things and inside and under the bed. It’s still missing.*
Shasta: (Supportively) You’ll get there mommy. You will find it.
Mommy: Next year in Jerusalem. (She sighs.) Me and all the other pilgrims looking for our journals.
Shasta: Well, organization is the Empire’s weapon. The Rebellion kind of sucks at it.
Mommy: (Wry smile) True.
Shasta: Mommy, do you think organization itself leads to the dark side?
Mommy: (Nodding agreement.) Good question. Maybe it does. Yet organization has much to recommend it. We can’t always blame weapons malfunctions or large, dangerous reactor leaks, and we can only shoot the intercom so many times.
Shasta: We can try, mommy. We can try.
Mommy is not sure if Shasta means try to organize, or try to keep blaming reactor leaks and weapons malfunctions, but she sets the question of organization aside for the moment.
Mommy: Let’s just watch our show. We can tackle the big questions later.
Shasta and mommy watch “The Player,” a fine, 1992 film that explodes with cameos.
(Our play ends as Shasta settles down for a nap and Mommy goes to heat a pot of delicious homemade chicken noodle soup, thick with sturdy noodles, carrots, celery and big chunks of chicken. Mommy knows that Monday will be eaten by the Aged Fiona, the dead Acura who must be fixed, but Fiona comes later. That car is in its own malignant, battery-sucking time loop, a loop that is not Fiona’s fault. When 180,000 miles you reach, run this good you will not, she thinks, channeling Master Yoda. Mommy stirs the soup.)
*The journal was located hiding in the car eventually.
